A Return to the Basics of Human Consciousness

Among the many problems seemingly facing America today, perhaps one is more urgent than others.  It is true we are in the midst of a social siege.  While not an all out civil war yet, the far right assault upon our democracy is laced with insurrection.  The Republicans in power in The Swamp want to sweep it under the rug, so coverture is their methodology.  Trump's methods, while seemingly bombastic and ludicrous, were highly evolved and executed.  Only was it the pandemic that removed him from power.  While the Covid 19 debacle continues to be a deadly nemesis for the world, it removed from power a potential fascist oligarch.  We must consider out options.  I feel at my core Covid 19 has been genocide.  Concurrently with Trump's stealth and underhanded tactics, a clever ruse to murder those who appear to be a drain on the system is not out of the realm of possibility.  Why would Judy Mikovitz lie?  "Plandemic" systematically has been erased from social media in a widespread effort to quell questioning of the source of the virus.  What she says seems logical, plausible, and probable.  It's all about money in Capitalism.  So many of Trump's allies have prospered from the pandemic.  The stock market has continued to profit, and select entities have increased their wealth dramatically.  This is not a coincidence.  It is so grievous most Americans refuse to consider it.  It is genocide, and that means the population of the world has sustained a deliberate attack.  Maybe this is why we are at odds with the political agenda of the day.  It is not just that the far right Republican agenda is radical, extreme, and undemocratic, it is that genocide from a covert biological assault could have been used.  It is not a coincidence.  All of this aside, consider how American life has floundered.  The culture of America has become murky, confused, and androgynous.  We have chosen to ignore the God-given dynamic of man/woman, or at least mainstream entertainment has chosen to embrace their own slant.  When heterosexuality also is under assault, how is anyone able to find security?  What represents sexuality today is internet pornography, and these websites broadcast from all over the world are as low brow and perverted as the Euro-trash that make them.  They are not exemplary, and they are not healthy much like the rest of chosen media in the last few decades.  Extremism has infiltrated many aspects of American life.  Capitalism requires the production of revenue, and when the means of production has been outsourced to foreign nations it leaves Americans in the lurch.  How could any young person today develop any concept of common sense?  Our sensibilities have been under attack for a long time.  Once church and school provided the foundation for this education.  Public schools were the cornerstone of American society.  They were important, and consequently they were respected and funded by government.  Systematically we have dismantled pubic education in an overt assault on our millennial generation.  We have taken advantage of them, exploited them, and now America has no tangible workforce.  No one wants to work, because conditions are extreme and pay is insulting.  The white plantation owners have won for the time being.  The solution to these problems lies in cleansing and healing the American soul.  Spiritual medicine is the most effective antidote, and always it has been.  We have tried to erase God from our consciousness, and heterosexuality is next.  If we would take the time to reflect upon its virtues, its rewards, and its strengths, instead of exploiting it with depravity and contempt, Americans could find a better existence.  The dynamic of heterosexuality for thousands of years has been the cornerstone of human existence for a reason.  This dynamic most aptly has been expressed in the musical language, because rhythm and sound are organic.  They are a core component of the human soul, human physiology, and human consciousness.  This language of human pheromones is best personified in music, and it is this language which has fueled the human race for centuries.  It is time to return to the basics, and the basics are science.  Who would you trust more, Sigmund Freud or Lindsey Graham?  

Oppression of the Artistic Voice

I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about "Black Lives Matter."  All I can do is react to what I see and hear on television news, contemplate what I read on the internet, and try to make some sense of it.  While the deaths of black men and women at the hands of police is notorious, what we are forgetting is the entire aesthetic of rap music.  Maybe "Gangsta Rap" was a reaction to police brutality.  It cannot be argued that NWA (Niggers With Attitude) weren't a prolific, influential, revenue earning organization.  I hesitate to call them a band.  They are a rap group, a fusion of ghetto poetry and "spun beats" provided by a competent DJ.  (no band necessary)  If the message of the words were honest, motivating, and somewhat inflammatory, they were delivered with power and attitude, and the beats provided created grooves that were tangible to the human soul, what a powerful stew that would concoct.  A few other black groups were credited with the first rap verses, but they were kitschy and wreaked of stale beer from the disco dance floor.  NWA was pure anger aimed at the oppression of the white man, society, and government over black lives.  These men toured America extensively pouring this vitriol into middle class homes.  It was not until later that Gangsta sentiments emerged.  With these rap songs came extreme violence, misogyny, and vanity.  White America including Tipper Gore went to extreme lengths to try an mitigate these inciting messages.  There is a fine line between the free speech of the Constitution and inciting rhetoric.  It is up to society to be the judge.  Certainly it was not extreme to try to censor vulgar and depraved lyrics from our childrens' ears.  The Gangsta Rap community promoted violence as a way to achieve notoriety and earn revenue.  It worked, until they all killed themselves off in the violence.  There are many precedents for racial injustice in America, and making drug addicted criminals martyrs isn't the appropriate answer.  Let's reflect for a moment on previous movements of "Black Lives Matter."  When compared with today, BLM is but a small blip on America's radar.  That is because it has no ammunition.  What was the ammunition of previous generations of BLM ?  The answer is many things, but the most notable is STAX.  STAX records, which successfully had integrated musicians in America, and went on to pioneer the "Black Power Movement" through blaxploitation films was a major force in fighting white oppression in America.  They waged this fight with the sheer moxy of black spirit.  They changed the image of the black man and woman forever.  There are times in life when subtle or gradual change is not effective.  Depression is one of those situations which calls for direct and immediate action.  You must change.  Leave the old behind, and march forward with the new.  STAX Records' line up of artists worked for change.  They didn't protest.  They didn't complain.  Instead they created a musical vehicle upon which to voice their message.  This is what art is, and it is what we are lacking today.  

Can We Choose Jazz Over Communism?

 It is Memorial Day weekend, and much of Fayetteville has bugged out.  (at least in middle and upper class neighborhoods)  Fayetteville has a history of old money, but that is changing.  The Cumberland Foundation has accumulated over one hundred million dollars.  That is earning interest making it appealing for future donors.  It would be a safe place to keep money.  Cumberland Country seems to have no lack of money, because of its history of this old money.  The older generation is dying out, and the once prominent families have waned in influence.  There must be a tangible human presence for influence to occur.  Fayetteville has moved in another direction, and it is logical to say it has been toward "Black Lives Matter."  When downtown residents and business owners have their property vandalized with no protection from the local police, change is occurring.  I agree with the decision made by Mitch Colvin, when these violent protests were taking place.  George Floyd, a Fayetteville native, died at the hands of the police.  Consequently nation wide protests erupted including downtown Fayetteville.  It was no different than riots in Los Angeles, Detroit, or any other racially volatile area.  They smashed some windows, and a not so bright soul set himself on fire trying to burn down the Market House.  Because they were protesting the police, it did not make sense to send the police.  If the police had been dispatched to quell the violence, live would have been lost.  Of this I am sure.  Not sending the police was a diplomatic decision, and it was the right one.  The other side of the coin is law abiding, hard working, white residents of downtown were infringed upon.  Their businesses were not protected from this civil unrest.  The rationale is that property is replaceable, lives are not.  It was thought most of these business owners would carry liability insurance.  Who knows if their policies would cover vandalism?  If the local police failed to respond when businesses were being looted, isn't it a sign of weakness?  It does not set a good example for law enforcement in the community.  Subsequently the Market House was closed and cordoned off.  Barriers were erected and a mural was painted on the street encircling the monument.  It is a unique structure, half monument and half building best described as an open air market.  With a quick Google search no tangible evidence is found slaves were sold here.  It would be prudent for local historians and scholars to confirm this.  In another suggestion of weakness, the mural painted on the street was removed at Colvin's behest later to be re-painted with private money.  It took only a few days for this to happen.  The mayor conceded.  The rest of the residents of Fayetteville were not queried.  No one was asked if they agreed with the painting of "Black Lives Matter" on the street encircling the Market House.  If viewed hypothetically these words themselves suggest racial discrimination.  Do not all lives matter?  Downtown Fayetteville only is for black lives?  In response to this debatable issue, a local group of former politicians and business owners are collecting signatures to support putting this decision on the ballot to be voted upon.  It specifically is not about the painted mural on the street.  It is confronting the overall issue of change in Fayetteville.  Ironically for the first time the City Council is all African-American.  Whether it is racist or not, an all black or all white governing body is not integrated.  The "Vote Yes Fayetteville" organization seeks to gain enough signatures to have a referendum placed on a municipal election.  This referendum would add four seats at large to the Fayetteville's City Council, and allow citizens to vote for more than their one representative.  It seems like a logical choice to make the City Council more representative of Fayetteville's population, which seems to be changing.  The old money is dying out, and young people choose not to live in Fayetteville, because it lacks some amenities offered by other more metropolitan cities.  We after all are a military community, although not everyone works for the Department of Defense.  Violence nationwide has peaked, and even with the outbreak of Covid 19, violent crime has escalated dramatically.  This trend began with the election of Donald Trump and could be linked to white nationalist sentiments.  The police and retired military personnel have been found to engage in these sentiments.  Thus the former president could be to blame for a resurgence of violent racially motivated crime.  Not that long ago the Clinton's promoted Multiculturalism, a blending of national and cultural habits which suggested diverse populations can coexist in America.  Always we have done so, because America is a nation of immigrants.  Everyone at one time was from a different country seeking refuge from political oppression and improved economic opportunity.  To concept of white supremacy is flawed, and it conclusively is proven when examining black achievement in the 20th century.  America's soul, while anchored with white European money, became black very quickly.  African-Americans had to work the hardest to survive, because of a racially prejudiced population.  In a nutshell when you don't have anything else, you put your full effort into your goal.  Luckily for America culture has prospered from its consortium of artists.  American jazz, while grossly misunderstood and underappreciated, is the soul of America.  Her infrastructure was provided by the Carnagie, Rockefeller, and Morgan families, but the voice of America was created by African Americans.  The genius of these artists often of meager origins is the American Dream.  Without them America is destined to become a communist oligarchy.  During the Trump presidency, we were well on our way. 

Now's the Time, but It's a Major Drag

 I keep learning.  Recently I read a religious post or "lesson" on Facebook.  It was simple.  Growth does not begin until we submit completely.  We must give up everything with which we are familiar and improvise day to day.  What is it about this process that promotes learning?  Are we unable to learn while secure in our own knowledge and experiences of life?  That can't be true.  True growth it said, spiritual growth, involves the soul, not just the mind.  It is education.  It is making mistakes and learning from them.  Schooling on the other hand is a more careful teaching and learning of rules to avoid failure.  I will not abandon what I know, because what I have learned allows me to navigate a both challenging and now life threatening existence.  It has or always had been survival of the fittest.  I must use what I know to survive.  On the other hand what I have done is give up my own personal goals, temporarily.  It is like opening and closing cabinet doors.  Today I must open this cabinet and deal with its contents.  Most of the compartments are disparate.  My life in retrospect has been disparate.  I had a short lived chapter of basketball proficiency augmented with swimming.  Needless to say a chapter like this is predicated by your environment.  I had the Athletic Center available to me at Ohio State, because I had been enrolled in the DMA program in music composition.  Although I was not enrolled in classes over this particular summer, I was granted an athletic pass to use this facility.  I swam.  I started slow in the "adult's section" and worked my way up to swimming laps in the Olympic sized pool.  Always I hated the "American Crawl," or whatever that stroke is.  I used the side stroke on both sides and a modified backstroke.  It was enough, and I lost weight immediately.  Treading water in the deep end for five to ten minutes will trim inches off your waistline immediately.  While I was swimming and inadvertently getting in better physical shape, I played basketball in my apartment complex parking lot.  It was one of the boons of this particular dwelling in contrast to its extreme hazards.  This apartment complex was a rife feeding ground for thieves.  They drove from miles away to break into cars in this lot, because most of the inhabitants were graduate students.  They were not poor, and therefore their vehicles reflected this higher status of college enrollment.  Larceny is not my topic of discussion.  Instead the basketball goals provided by the complex contained in this parking lot were of great use.  They were steel posts professionally installed in the asphalt with steel backboards and heavy duty metal rims.  I purchased my own nets and installed them while standing on the roof of my Toyota Tercel wagon.  These goals, because of their quality construction, provided a needed and necessary aural reinforcement to my shooting endeavors.  The sound of the ball rebounding off the metal backboard and the subsequent "swoosh" as the ball fell through the rim were positive conditioning in my learning to shoot effectively.  Like music the rhythm and sound of the basketball aesthetic were therapeutic during this chapter of my life.  I took the General Exams for the DMA in composition, and on my first attempt did not pass everything.  I did well in the theory/composition and aural skills portions of these exams.  I knew my music, because I had studied for almost a year.  What I did not do well in was music history, because I failed to find the appropriate article upon which I was supposed to write.  I found another article by Donald Tovey and mistakenly wrote about its subject.  While I did an adequate job discussing its content, I missed the mark.  The second shortcoming I had was in discussing jazz history and its contributing artists.  I wrote about instrumentalists but failed to credit the major vocalists.  Twenty-five years later I still am working on this issue.  I knew the major jazz singers, as most people do.  What I didn't know, like Dr. Ted McDaniel did, was the history of the Blues and more specifically the roots of African-American music.  He was in fact co-chair of the African American and Jazz Studies disciplines at OSU.  What he didn't realize was my DMA degree was in orchestra and chamber music of the twentieth century.  Went I went to OSU I stayed involved in the jazz program, because those were my roots.  After three years it became necessary for me to put jazz on the shelf and embrace the curriculum offered by the composition department at OSU.  It was with a bit of reserve I made this decision, but I was serious about completing the degree.  Ted expected from me on this exam the same amount of knowledge of jazz as I had prepared for the orchestral part.  I couldn't do both.  They equally are as demanding, and I was not adequately prepared to discuss the lineage of jazz history.  There was no DMA program in jazz studies, and he felt like he may have been an inappropriate choice for my doctoral committee.  Actually I had no clue or finesse in picking a committee.  I did not think much about it, and certainly I did little to include them in my preparation.  This is the art of politics.  Subsequently I became a very good basketball player and trimmed my waist to 30 inches.  Unfortunately I never was able to enroll again to complete the degree.  I needed to make money, not spend it for tuition.  This small chapter, a summer spent dribbling, shooting, and swimming in the blazing sun is a faint memory for me, but still I want a goal.  There are several other chapters of recent years, where I explored alternative aesthetics.  I became a landscaper, and also I became a competent cook.  When engaging in these activities you must commit completely, and evidently I had enough spare time to do so.  No longer is that space available in my brain.  Instead my desire to think about and perform has returned.  I am cooking and gardening enough to be ahead of the curve, but my knack for these aesthetics is scant compared to what it was at one time.  Why?  The answer is because I refuse to embrace the creative aspect of either.  Somehow subliminally I feel I am being scrutinized, and the private trappings of my soul, my creativity, and my emotional expression are for me only.  I don't feel compelled to exert my mojo at this time, because there is little support, reinforcement, or appreciation of my talent.  We are in a very volatile, violent, and superficial American time.  The dregs of society are duking it out on a daily basis, and I want nothing to do with it.  This is the dog eat dog real world, but it is a drag. 

The War of the Sexes

I don't think there is any question that one of the most painful human experiences is being denied the privilege of expressing love.  God might object, because He would state simply He is available for your love always.  This is what He wants.  As human beings living in a real world, we not always are capable of showing God our love.  We are taxed by human inequity.  We are beset with hardship.  We travail and are heavy laden.  Under those circumstances sometimes we forget to love God.  It is not the same as human love.  Human love by nature is more physical.  There are many degrees of human love, but again I don't think there is any question that more often than not the physical aspect of human love becomes the most important.  Spiritual love is viable, but while I have cycled in and out of different types of love, I have come to believe in my older age physical love is more important.  That may sound hedonistic.  The pursuit of pleasure is not the same as the pursuit of happiness, and pleasure often times will not make you happy.  Given the two choices it would be a difficult decision.  Your instincts guide you in the journey.  If you are not happy often pleasure is shallow or short lived.  It can be empty.  I have found that pleasure often is not reinforced in modern society.  Evil does not want you to find either pleasure or happiness.  I would go so far as to say Evil's job, its intent, is to deny you either.  Are both of these things sinful?  Does God want us to be miserable?  While there are many interpretations of God's will, most of us would agree God does not want us to be unhappy.  I have learned He wants to revel through humanity and how the human being succeeds.  He wants to see us work take pride in His creation.  It is up to us as human beings to make our own way, but living on this earth at this time has become difficult.  It feels almost the opposite of wanting pleasure and happiness.  There are those not capable of feeling either, and consequently they demand or require you be miserable with them.  This is no way to live, because you are not productive when you are laden with troubles.  Of course there are those who do flourish under duress, so there is an opposite side of that coin.  Perhaps it is a consideration of time and how much time we have to devote to positive things.  If we constantly are battling unhappiness, pain, and loneliness are we capable of being productive?  That is a true test, and Wynton Marsalis explains it well.  You must muster the energy to do the thing you don't want to do.  It is sheer will power to overcome evil.  Perhaps we learn to live without human love.  It is possible.  We still can love ourselves, and often and certainly today, everything is risky.  All around me are histrionics, self induced tragedy, and drama.  It is such a waste of time all of these things.  When you are compelled to express human love however our body's demand, how will we do it?  Traditionally it has been through marriage and their prerequisite relationships.  I am neither a Baby Boomer nor a Gen X'er, but I have traits of both generations.  I remember better times than these, and these times were based upon human love most often heterosexual.  Film, television, music, poetry, and literature all dealt with human love.  It is what has driven the human race for most of its existence.  Then there is now, a time when millennials don't even know their own gender.  It is not their fault.  It is the fault of previous generations, those who chose to brain wash and manipulate our youth.  They know not what they do, and now we must live with it.  I am becoming more bitter and more jaded as the pandemic eases, and I begin to remember where we left off.  I see as a music educator how we have failed the millennial generation.  It is frightening to enter some public schools, because the level of intelligence now is so low.  I turn on the television, and there the example is.  Trash.  Violence.  Drugs.  Ignorance mostly.  More accurately I hate by what I am surrounded on a daily basis.  Living in the American South does not help.  I am unrequited, because I have few colleagues.  I am forced to live in a vacuum, and that vacuum is beginning to rupture and demand attention.  What I find, and it may be psychological, is that the world is against you.  I find myself to be a middle aged white male, the chosen demon of the last decade.  I have no inclination to don a MAGA hat and protest it by following Donald Trump.  Instead I want to learn from this experience.  The test is, and it is the solution for depression, is to learn how to live without physical love and intimacy.  If you have been lucky enough to have had it, then easily it becomes second nature.  You may take it for granted, or you may just consider it a natural part of a human relationship.  I feel most people would agree we all understand the human need for love and companionship.  The problem has become the war of the sexes.  We have had this before.  We have had Women's Lib.  We have had penis envy.  We have had the sexual revolution, but you wouldn't know it.  You wouldn't know it because Big Brother is hard at work cancelling American history.  It really is true.  Our cultural history is being oppressed through the censorship of the arts.  Donald Trump would not fund the arts.  It was Nancy Pelosi who negotiated funding for PBS and other artistic institutions through the first care package for Covid 19.  They had to sneak it in as "pork."  This is fascism.  With the disguising of American cultural history, the millennial generation has lost sight of the soul of humanity.  Truly they don't get it.  They don't understand human physical love and its gifts and responsibilities.  Once it drove human existence, but today it is some kind of narcissistic trip saying recognize me and my unwillingness to conform to any kind of traditional norm.  We want to re-engineer the human race.  We have better and more important things to do then being self indulgent with vanity.  Vanity is bad.  It is better to love your neighbor, but we don't know how because America has tried to erase God from our everyday lives.  We have extruded Christianity from our nation, and consequently we are a violent, misguided, mass of confusion.  The most difficult thing I ever have felt, and that includes four years of clinical depression, is feeling society refusing to allow me to acknowledge physical heterosexual love.  Today if you express interest in or desire for a woman, you are a predator.  You are Jeffrey Epstein.  You are Harvey Weinstein.  These men have tainted the male gender, its definition in Christianity, and its importance in the survival of the human race.  Conveniently we have demonized the white man for all of our ills, including fascist police brutality.  Once the white man was a noble, intelligent, creative, thoughtful being.  History is dotted with his excellence and his achievements.  Why must I be the scapegoat?  Much of the cruise industry is run by a "Gay Mafia," and this is no joke.  Their job and their full intent is to thwart heterosexual interaction.  God intended the man/woman relationship to be the foundation for survival.  Now we have turned it into war.  

Ross McNutt or Doug Clark? Who is Nuttier?

I have been trying to gather my thoughts of the day, and they are disparate.  Necessarily that doesn't make for an uninteresting blog entry.  It may be of more interest considering the history of ADD in this country.  Attention Deficit Disorder, another malady quietly put to bed by American media.  (or was it Big Pharma?)  Perhaps their drugs for this affliction, Ritalin, Adderall, and Dexedrine weren't selling.  In any case although you can bet Attention Deficit Disorder still is at play, America had decided no longer to pay attention.  The solution for hyperactivity, a decided lack of attention span, and aggressive behavior is an iPhone.  Ouch.  When your government fails to regulate corporate pollution, provide health conscious guidelines for businesses, and overall protect your well being, the answer is addiction.  It's the "Razzle Dazzle."  Smoke and mirrors.  Abandon and exploit the Millennial Generation.  Turn them into a lot of naive, over confident, rose colored glasses wearing army of LGBT malcontents.  That isn't very flattering, and I'm sorry.  Partly this is true, because never before in mainstream American culture have citizens been confused about their gender.  LGBT has lobbied hard to make gender and choice, and what confusion it has caused.  A "Bathroom Bill" was penned, and lost North Carolina the NCAA tournament.  Boatloads of greenbacks went some other way, but not into the coffers of North Carolinians.  This was a mistake and not in the best interest of our state.  Consequently Pat McCrory lost the governorship to Roy Cooper.  Mr. McCrory was on the board of Duke Energy, and although they were prosecuted for their Dan River coal ash spill, Pat quietly reduced their monetary fine to nothing.  It was supposed to be millions, one of the largest settlements of its kind for an EPA infraction, and it was reduced to a few million.  Duke Energy proceeded to gas light North Carolinians we were responsible for the clean up.  Why would Duke Energy board members and higher ups chip in for their own irresponsibility?  This is the  Republican way.  The Patriot Act effectively eliminated personal privacy for Americans, and still it is in play.  How?  The idea of a "Pulsed Microwave Weapon" most likely is a byproduct of something else.  Yes, the United States military does have its Active Denial System, but it is cumbersome and expensive.  To generate enough electricity to create a deterring ray of microwaves which are possible accurately to aim requires a 95 GHz 100kW gyrotron.  "Oh boys and girls! We just happen to have one right here!  We'll be happy to sell it to the United States government for a 1000% profit."  Defense contractor companies invent these weapons and pitch them to the Pentagon and Department of Defense.  L3/Harris has become the sixth largest defense contractor, and their company history is frightening.  It has consumed everything.  Every kind of company you can imagine has been absorbed by this Borg.  Recently L3/Harris sent one of its Gulfstream jets to Syria to do the aerial mapping and topography of future targets for piracy.  The military, our military, is responsible for the actual assault, but L3 highly is involved.  As it turns out one of their expensive planes was destroyed, several employees were murdered along with an American serviceman.  I used to see their jet regularly flying over Fayetteville, because their office is on the corner of Morganton and Sycamore Dairy Roads.  Just recently I located yet another miscellaneous aircraft "Makin' lazy circles in the sky."  Most of this activity was over the drop zones at Fort Bragg, but eventually they got closer and closer to where we live.  Then I realized why.  The plane was an Indonesian manufactured cargo rust bucket, but who must have built the surveillance array inside?  The answer is L3/Harris.  It was not long ago that Sierra Nevada was making these sensors.  Before L3/Harris moved into this location, ironically they were nestled in the back closet of the local Harris Teeter store.  A small section of asphalt was cordoned off with a tall chain link fence in the back parking lot of the store, and suddenly appeared multiple satellite transmitting dishes.  A stones throw from this communications facility was the Fayetteville Arms Room, a gated brick facility tasked with keeping track of all of the weapons at Fort Bragg.  What does any of this have to do with anything?  LiDAR, Light Detection and Ranging, is a technology currently in use in these surveillance planes.  Whether they belong to the Department of Homeland Security and Border Patrol, which circled endlessly above our neighborhood when L3/Harris was at this location, or Special Operations at Fort Bragg in any of their ISR platform planes, LiDAR aerial topography uses pulsed microwave energy.  There are many types of lasers.  Some are continuous, and some used pulsed energy.  If the energy is in the microwave range, including T Waves, then the speed of the pulses could be their determinant.  If aids in Washington, DC felt symptoms of such an "attack," more likely it meant they were being surveilled by a government sanctioned military plane.  This has been going on for some time, and although now I am cognizant of the continual air traffic above our neighborhood, some of it is more invasive and upsetting than others.  Tonight I began to feel sick, so I rushed to my computer to open any of the flight tracking websites.  Military planes are disguised, so only is their a call sign listed.  With a bit of cross reference it is easy enough to pinpoint the aircraft.  Tonight's Girlfriend?  Lockheed Martin HC-130J strutting its stuff.  It took off from Valdosta, GA and flew to Pope Field for a touch and go.  Upon getting within a few miles of our house, it was flying at about 500 feet.  "Oh joy!"  Whatever surveillance equipment they have onboard including phased array radar  beats down on our living space.  I am becoming keener in recognizing these different disturbances from down under.  The Republican strategy is to say nothing is happening.  It is the most low ball, grass roots, corn fed approach to what has become an increasingly eletroncially sophisticated world.  So we all are crazy for our educations, intelligence, and common sense in understanding Congress has forsaken the American people for long enough.  Trump's cronies have gotten rich as hell, and there is no money left.  Common people don't have it.  There is no need to surveill us.  While the intelligence community has intercepted some domestic terrorist activity, Ross McNutt and his Persistent Surveillance Systems have discovered little.  They have made money in the charade.  

Those Lehman Brothers.

There is a lot going on.  Who could know withdrawing American military personnel from Afghanistan would trigger an all out war?  (In Israel)  I understand Israel is an important ally of the United States, but "A Knitting Yahoo" has had his ups and downs.  We haven't been following Israeli politics, because American news media have not been covering it.  (like many important issues)  What ever happened to Sinn Fein?  I imagine this political party is still in existence, but the Trumptista regime wanted no mention of a forceful, strong, independent political movement not intimidated by big money.  Hence quietly, like most other relevant things in the world, they were put to bed by our conglomerate-owned media.  We have been living in a vacuum for four years, and now Covid.  The biggest irony is the new Republican party has no ideas or identifying agenda for running America, the nation.  Their only inclination is to shore up their classist, elitist, racist, eventually fascist oligarchy.  We dodged this bullet by mere millimeters, and the new Republican party still is lying about the rebellion.  In effect the coup still is in play, and necessarily Washington is continuing to mitigate the scenario with the help of a new Justice Department under the fitting leadership of Merrick Garland.  Slowly subpoenas are being handed out as the intelligence community does what it should have been doing for the four years of the Trump regime.  Certainly the "Stooge Presidency" will go down in history once we extricate its still lasting ramifications.  The biggest clown is Louis DeJoy, and while the postal Board of Governors is tasked with this appointment, it is within Joe Biden's reach to "empty this swamp."  Mail, necessary and often life-giving surface mail, has been erratic since DeJoy's rise to power.  It is no surprise, since the "Stooge Presidency" intended to dismantle our entire democratic system.  More importantly the news has shifted to Israeli Palestinian Conflict.  Actually it is a breath of fresh air seeing other nations war.  America is not actively meddling in this Middle Eastern grift.  Of course we are, but it more sophisticated than "The War on Terror."  I'll have to do my reading to bone up on its intent.  In a nutshell I recall Jews verses Arabs to be blunt, and the Gaza strip is the center of the fight.  For Benjamin Netanyahu to bomb the media building, they must really want to fight incognito.  Netanyahu has been convicted of corruption.  He has ebbed and flowed as the leader of Israel for many years.  How the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan has triggered this skirmish is unknown.  It is not that important to me.  What is more important are the forces behind the Trump movement, namely defense contractors.  Recently I railed upon the idea of "Pulsed Microwave Weapons."  I suggested the only companies with access to these frequencies are telecommunications conglomerates who purchased the rights during the Clinton auction of the airwaves, which he claimed balanced the national budget.  Still we are paying for this action.  Not only has the entire American economy shifted (with the passing of NAFTA), but we are subject to unprecedented corporate pollution.  Effectively these corporations have lobbied the FCC so diligently, there now is little to no oversight concerning cell phone microwave transmission.  These ugly, heating, radiating, millimeter wave transmitters at next sight will be on trees in our neighborhoods, and no one seems to care.  I suggested telecommunications companies were the only people capable of using these frequencies, and I lied.  How did I lie.  I present my first evidence.  L3/Harris.  

The Continuing Siege

As I sit here and listen to Dr. John's "City Lights," a seemingly relevant but anachronistic original album penned mostly by Dr. John himself, it begs the question of how music in 1980 should effect us today.  The lineage of music history covers centuries, not decades.  It would be wise for America to realize one of our most substantial and influential contributions to the world is American popular music.  I use this term extremely broadly to describe all American music not in the realm of the European orchestral tradition.  Both could be considered concert music, and as aptly we have forgotten in 2020 American popular music was a decisive force in American economics for decades, popular music began to describe America's unique, original, and artistic contribution to the entire field of music.  Often it is suggested the term "jazz" is a slang misrepresentation of the music it is meant to represent.  "Jass" possessed overt sexual connotations, and a meager attempt was made to change it to jazz.  Lee Morgan and others staunchly would suggest the better term is African American Classical Music.  He is right.  To suggest America no longer is a racist nation would beg the question why jazz music still is not recognized as the true soul of America.  Most would agree it is, or rather black artist music more accurately portrays the experiences and resulting feelings of the majority of struggling Americans.  It depends how and where you look.  Consider this.  A force in America choose to murder what could be considered the two most prolific, Christian, and honest leaders of civil rights.  When this movement was in motion effecting change in racism and classism, attempting to reverse the brutal, savage, and often murderous Jim Crow laws of the Old South, a force in our nation sanctioned the killing of Dr. Martin Luther King and President John F. Kennedy.  Depending upon which political lens of today through which you decide to look, both of these men were considered good.  They were doing the right thing.  America, and it is fair to say that these actions didn't represent the majority view, killed these men.  They were assassinated in a very high profile, seditious, and traitorous assault upon the democracy and resulting freedom in America.  To say we are not a racist nation is ludicrous.  It is burying your head in the sand and ignoring the fabric of American history.  The more appropriate political tactic in decreeing America is not a racist nation, is attempting to gaslight millennials into believing these atrocities never happened.  Consequently when I hear about reparations for slavery in the form of monetary payments to descendants of slaves, consider the slain lives of hundreds of thousands of mostly white American men in our Civil War.  These lives are payment enough.  Racism is alive and well in America, and it has been resurrected by Donald Trump and his new Republican Party.  An open letter signed by retired members of the United States Military, continuing to make false claims about a stolen election is nothing more than a Trump-penned lie.  Rest assured it can and will be traced back to his desk at Mar-o-Lago.  What else does he have to do?  If America were to stop this fascist rebellion in its tracks by imprisoning its leader, then we could get back to the heart of American ingenuity, popular music.  There 20th Century represents ten differing decades of musical evolution, creativity, and expression.  Each embodies the soul of America at that particular time in history, and yet we do not care.  We can not wait for our musical artists to die, so there is less competition for evil.  Exactly this is what has happened in America.  Instead of embracing and continuing to teach about American artists' contributions to life, quickly we seal their casket and put them in the ground.  Two hundred million dollars paid to Bob Dylan was not to preserve his legacy of protest poetry and music.  It was meant to suppress it.  Cancel Culture has been in full swing since Republicans came into power.  Ask yourself if the image and voice of Miss Lindsey represents the America in which you want to live.  Contrarily is it a "Rebel Without a Cause?"  If the American military had been swayed to the desires of Mr. Trump, Communism would have been born in America overnight.  It would have been a stealth, covert, and painless overthrow, until reality began to reveal itself.  Many populations in previous revolutions were smitten by charismatic personalities disguising fascist intent.  If all you need in a leader is someone to stroke your ego and make you feel good, you have more history to read. 

The Devil Hath Horns of Orange

The propagandist guilt being administered on the evening news is "The Women of Afghanistan."  Wouldn't we want to keep American troops there for another twenty years, because of these women?  If we cared for our own women as much.  It is a shame the political nature of these Middle Eastern nations, but we cannot change it.  We shouldn't change it.  It is not our responsibility to change it.  Would we care so much about the women in Iraq?  The women elsewhere?  No, so they need to stop squeezing this lemon.  If Gen. Mark Milley wants Joe Biden to keep our troops in Afghanistan, then we should be honest enough to say why.  It isn't their women.  It is their other natural resources.  Obviously the men of Afghanistan have a low opinion of their own women, but misogyny isn't uncommon in the world.  Our regard of this country is for other reasons.  These reasons are precious natural resources in the form of minerals and other elements buried in those vast mountains.  We are experiencing a lithium shortage.  Let us be bold enough to say that the poppies grown in the country may be of more value on the open market.  Poppies and minerals.  Not women.  Stop pitching us, "The Women of Afghanistan" show.  They are as worthy as women in other nations, maybe more?  If the Joints Chief of Staff decide to keep American troops in this country, it is not because of their women.  For twenty years our troops have been allowed to play army on this battlefield, so what will they do now?  Who are we to fight?  If the American military wants to fight so badly (and it is their chosen vocation) then perhaps we can send them to Mars to fight themselves.  Then America can begin the slow recovery to a peace time economy.  We are not sure if it is possible, because defense companies are so aggressive pandering their wares.  Without conflict how could we use all of these high tech war tool?  Ross McNutt pitched his invention of 360 degree aerial surveillance from a low flying Cessna 24/7.  The trouble was someone has to view and analyze all of that video footage.  After annoying countless citizens for several years, and with the American police force under scrutiny for malfeasance, they discovered this methodology helped no one.  No more criminals were being caught than before, but our civil rights upon were being infringed.  It was not until recently that Covid necessarily stymied most outdoor activity, so how could such an expense be justified?  America's first billionaire, a Texas gas trader and his wife, paid for such surveillance over American cities.  This is not Constitutional.  Luckily Joe Biden knows better, and while the conspiracy theories, falsehoods, and misdirection continue from the new Republican party, we will not have it.  Witch Hunt chasing demons and Chupacabra no longer will suffice when half a million Americans have perished from a new virus.  We need to get out of the Middle East and repair America, but I am not sure it is possible.  We have forsaken our own country, our own people, and our own economy for the rich.  We have been thrown to the dogs, and unless this contingency of goat suckers is identified, taxed, and prosecuted when necessary the demise of America will continue.  Joe Biden is the right leader, and he knows the deal.  Agent Orange is pacing in circles isolated in his Florida mansion.  The devil.  

"Drive Slow" and Improve Your Life Quality

 The current media blitzkrieg is "Women in Afghanistan."  Why do I find myself thinking more Republican after the election?  I am a democrat, whatever that means today.  The parties significantly have changed over the last decade, so former ideologies of either party no longer are accurate.  I am sympathetic to the "Black Lives Matter" movement, because black men are being murdered by the police.  Each incident should be evaluated separately.  If two deputies were shot dead serving papers on a subject, then isn't it logical paranoia would circulate within police departments?  It would be best to be on your guard serving papers, but also you must be calm and evaluate your individual situation.  It seems there is premeditation in many of these cases involving police serving warrants.  They are familiar with the situations of their subjects, and apparently there is bias against them.  This does not sanction murder.  The problem in America largely is with the police, and it began with the LAPD decades ago.  They take a proactive offensive stance toward organized crime, but due process also is required.  Body cams are proving to be a mediator as well as cell phone cameras.  Most people wouldn't be carrying digital cameras with them during their daily routines, so perhaps there is a small degree of merit to an iPhone.  What it does not provide in the least is a responsible, educated, comprehensive guide to driving.  I would be bold enough to say that the personal device, palm pilot, or cellular phone directly are responsible for many deaths across the glove.  Why?  It is simple, but today's Republicans would argue it is your inalienable right to text while driving, or not take the vaccine, or not wear a mask.  This callous and short-sighted behavior can kill other people.  We have begun a civil war all ready, when my neighbor continues to endanger my life with his narcissistic demands of personal freedoms.  If you are willing to sacrifice the life of your neighbor, because you are not willing to wear a mask, then that behavior demands to be accommodated.  Know your enemy, and they are all around you.  It is exhausting battling your enemy, corporate America, your neighbors.  I would rather spend my time doing fruitful things, rather than waste it.  One thing is for sure, and this is a perfect metaphor for a decline in the understanding of value in America, is that spending anytime on a personal device while driving is a disservice to your fellow man.  In my day to become a Driver's Education instructor, you had to pass the State Highway Patrol Trooper's exam.  This meant you understand the intricacies of driving a motor vehicle and its inherent dangers.  America no longer is concerned with such a thing.  We hand out Driver's Licenses like passports.  (More money for insurance companies, the state, and local lawmaker's budgets.)  States' need for local funds has usurped many necessary procedures in everyday life.  I got my driver's license renewed on the internet!  No eye test.  No written test.  No nothing.  They sent it in the mail.  When you are at the wheel of a five thousand pound moving projectile, there is no place for a personal device, except maybe a cigarette lighter.  Values in America drastically have changed, because of the iPhone.  When one looks back thieves once were interested in car stereos.  This was the only way you could hear "tunes" in your vehicle.  When they broke into your car, they would steal your car stereo.  They units had value.  They also used to steal bicycles.  No one is interested in either today, because we are spoiled.  When you drive the fun of driving is thinking about all of the things you learned in Driver's Ed.  "How many car lengths should I provide for each ten miles per hour of speed?  How do I execute this three point turn?  When should I signal?  How do I relate to my fellow drivers?"  These things seem archaic, but they still should be fresh on the minds of every driver on the road.  Never have they ceased to be important.  It is just we don't abide by them anymore, and therefore Fayetteville, North Carolina tops the nation's list of worst accident scenarios.  Tops in the nation for vehicle accidents, because the Police fail to enforce traffic laws.  It is like a Nascar race driving in Fayetteville, and nobody cares.  Accident?  More money for the hospital.  More money for the insurance company.  More money for the body shop.  This now is how we have come to think about life.  People are expendable.  When I drive, I pay attention.  I am alert.  I crack my windows and listen to the sounds of traffic.  I am proactive about my own survival, and no one else is.  Instead it is like Romper Room, marbles rolling around self-absorbed, manic, and insensitive.  If there were a few words which would improve our quality of life immediately in America, they would be "Drive slow."  Take it easy.  Pay attention.  Look around.  Is it really that important that you get there right now?  What have you got to lose, a few minutes of your life? 

Let Jimi Take Over!

The world seems a very scary place, and I'm not sure why.  In North Carolina the vaccination rate is thirty-one pecent.  (That means not many residents of North Carolina are getting the Covid vaccine.)  Whatever the reason, a disbelief of the authenticity of the vaccine, a distrust of Big Pharma, or a perceived infringement of personal freedoms, it is frightening.  It is frightening when your fellow man can kill you.  We have enough violence all ready.  Murders abound.  You would think we would want to be on the rebound, but things seem more foreboding than usual.  The Marines have have left Fort Bragg, but there was a flurry of activity today.  I have come not to mind the howitzers.  At least you know what they are, when they fire, and who is doing it.  What is more disruptive is the AC4400CW in the Milan Yard assembling a freight train consisting mostly of DAK America's product.  They make plastic bottles.  PET Resin.  Pellets.  I drove by today and that hulking, wheezing, whale of a machine was determined to get 'er done.  It is no surprise I don't like these things.  I have proven my case over and over in words.  Why has this particular several weeks been so oppressive?  It flipped on like a light switch, that low frequency wave which is comprised of air pressure, electricity, vibration, and possibly magnetism.  It has stayed in the low frequency range for two week, and all the while I have speculated they are putting together trains.  It was not until I drove by the Milan Yard today I saw it in person.  There was 434, Mr. Lightening Bolt, doing his thing.  I came home and Googled the number, and the result was no surprise.  It wasn't an ES44AC, the GEVO engine that replaced the previous 7FDL to comply with EPA Tier standards of emissions.  It was a Circa 1990 AC4400CW, the most invasive of all of the locomotives.  It simply is a DASH 9 on steroids, that being a C40-9W, a DC locomotive but with the 7FDL prime mover.  This wonder of the world is four thousand four hundred horses with a power inverter for each axle.  That makes six inverters each controlling an AC brushless traction motor.  Imagine the amount of tractive control when the computer can control each axle of two bogeys, three axles per bogey.  I guess this is why Mr. Gung Ho chose to use this highly tuned and powerful machine to assemble his DAK pellets.  Maybe it was something else.  DAK has their own yard, and it is large.  Many DAK Americas plants have their own engines.  'Round these here parts, they have their own custom sorting yard.  It  is amazing how one machine can leave such an environmental footprint.  Maybe they have lessened its carbon emissions, but the greater emissions now are electronic.  We are living in the ensuing "Electronic Age."  It has been predicted many times.  Microwaves all over the place jumping around, intermodulating without anyone really knowing it.  This stuff.  This low frequency alternating current.  This is a different matter all together.  When Mr. AC4400CW is out on the road hauling coal, it is not of such consequence.  Even at a whopping four miles an hour, those traction motors pull themselves out of the infrasonic range.  Putting trains together in a switching yard, back and forth, over and over, "Please let Jimi take over!"  

What Will We Do Now?

 Live and Learn.  The FlightAware website is an indispensable information gathering location on the World Wide Web.  There are a handful of active real-time flight tracking websites.  Who knew such a thing existed?  Understanding that "Them Internets" were created by the Department of Defense linking scholarly mostly academic data bases together when developing the nuclear bomb should clarify our cyber experience.  Today we shop on eBay and Amazon, gets our jollies on Facebook, post digital photographs on Instagram, and in the case of past president Donald Trump post inciting often fallacious rhetoric on Twitter sparking an impotent but still dangerous coup attempt in our nation's Capital.  I am not making light of the siege on Washington, but defined by sheer nature it was not a successful coup.  We don't believe it was meant to be.  Instead it was more akin to a rock gone wild.  Too many drugs and too much liquor and that was needed was a spark provided by Trump.  We should not underestimate the former President.  He is a savvy but ruthless businessman with no moral scruples.  President Obama in his recently published book described former Speaker of the House Mitch McConnell as having no moral conscience.  Having no moral conscience means you are not capable of feeling remorse, compassion, empathy, or love for your fellow man.  Instead you are a complete narcissist as is Donald Trump.  I can't imagine such an existence, seeing as love is the only thing that makes life worthwhile.  It is a spiritual fulfillment that far usurps any physical pleasure gained without it.  It is the emotional spark that fuels the heart and eventually the spirit and mind.  What we do on the internet today has become trite.  Social media has all but ruined our sense of reality, our ability to relate to others on a human level, and our ability to survive our environment.  When real tangible problems present themselves such as Covid 19, it has taken the world a year to even begin to mitigate its harm.  Our country, the greatest and most powerful nation in the world, couldn't succeed at the simple task of getting its citizens simply to wear masks.  Instead, like everything today, it has become an extended media debacle.  Ratings.  It would seem America needs these real life scenarios, meager attempts at experiencing and learning from what once was taught in school.  Whether it be Aesop's Fables, the Bible, or simple history literature like science has been demeaned to a level never before.  This is why television and film are so devoid of content.  Life must come from somewhere, and in America once it came from the population.  We had established a working model for life, and it was fruitful, fulfilling, and interesting.  Our folk culture was a large part of this life, and very few of these now seeming trite habits have endured the test of the 21st century.  It would seem the dire predictions of 2012 didn't unfold until 2020.  We are living it now, and like war seems not to be able to correct itself.  Will we ever return to normal American life?  We have been living in the trenches for a year, and like Korea and Viet Nam these experiences will remain in our souls.  You don't get rid of them.  You learn to live with them.  I never knew how many aircraft were flying in the air at any given time, until I began to peruse the Flight Aware website.  With great interest I have begun keeping track of air traffic above Cumberland County.  It is amazing how many private pilots there are and how diverse the ownership is of these small commuter planes is.  Whether is is Sanderson Farms, Eye in the Sky, or other miscellaneous unregistered planes hard at work doing whatever it is they do, air traffic is intense in Fayetteville.  There are flight schools.  There is aircraft maintenance.  There are defense contractors, and there are planes belonging to the United States Army.  These planes seem of most interest, because we as civilians have no idea what role they fulfill.  It doesn't take much time to find these aircraft online, but as are most things in the DoD they are classified.  Rest assured one thing for which we are in store is the massive return of our military from Afghanistan.  No one pays much attention, but the majority of munitions from America leave from the deep water port Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point at the mouth of the Cape Fear River.  This is in North Carolina.  Heavy equipment is hauled here on freight trains from all over the country to Leland, where it is sorted and picked up by military locomotives and pulled into this expansive port facility.  There are three huge docks capable of hosting large freighters which are commercially contracted.  Trains pull the munitions and equipment onto the docks and cranes load them into the ship.  I am sure this process has begun, and let's hope that we don't abandon this process mid stream and decide to leave our gear in Afghanistan.  All ready we have made this mistake single handedly creating an infrastructure for ISIL or ISIS.  They commandeered our left over military equipment, re-purposed it, and used it against the rest of the world.  We should make no mistake in Afghanistan.  Whether or not the consequences of our departure will rival the ascension of the regime of Pol Pot in Viet Nam cannot be considered.  As President Biden asserts, we need to get out.  Hauling your gear back from the Middle East cannot seems as glamorous as deploying to kick some towel head ass, but a kinder gentler time is needed for America.  I am positive Lindsey Graham all ready has another skirmish in the works to tweak our sense of domestic security.  If we do stop fighting, then the challenge becomes, "What do we do?" 

America's Former Age of the Suck Up

I have been thinking about the "Pulsed Microwave Weapon" conspiracy theory that appeared on the CBS Evening News this weekend.  Why does it have to be pulsed?  After reflecting on this question for a few days, it dawn on me that the term "pulsed" most likely is a blanket term to describe all electromagnetic energy.  I didn't learn until later in life, that sound waves actually are pulsed.  When I first saw a diagram of sound waves it was a great surprise.  Sound waves reciprocate or repeat themselves along their path of dispersion.  That is why they are called waves, and the properties of waves is upon what the science of physics is based.  In physics the waves are electromagnetic, and it is interesting to look at the electromagnetic spectrum and see what falls where.  After this verbose introduction the conclusion is most energy is pulsed or occurs in cycles.  Saying "Pulsed Microwave" is redundant.  Deciding that a weapon of this sort would fall into the microwave range of the electromagnetic spectrum is speculation, but because microwaves now are available to companies who bid on them in Bill Clinton's auction during his presidency, it is more plausible.  Microwaves abound, and we can see their evidence with each and every cell phone tower that arises from dust.  As I mentioned in my previous post, we put them on water towers.  We put them on rooftops.  We put them on sculptures.  We put them on flagpoles.  Telecommunication companies are as liberal with where they place their transmitter as Bill Cosby was with where he placed his finger and penis.  Telecommunications companies don't slip you a roofie in your merlot.  Instead with the great aid of a Trump presidency, which decries science as a whole, they tell you what they want you to believe and do exactly what will make them money.  Human health is of no consequence.  I am convinced if The Donald would have remained president, and his harem of right wing, queer, dough boy extremists successfully would have duped the American public into submission, we would be dead in a few decades.  If it wasn't the Coronavirus, it would be bacteria, fungus, or any other bleak prediction from the very real consequences of a warming planet.  Maybe the air would run it.  It has in India.  Because science is moot, they would just shoot from the hip, drink whiskey, molest under-aged girls, and spout lies like depraved bandits.  In thinking about "Pulsed Microwave Weapons" we must understand something about the electromagnetic spectrum.  Gamma rays are at the top of this spectrum, and their frequency is so rapid they produce radiation burn.  Either you become ill from expose with long term consequences or death, or you just get burnt up.  Those would be extreme for weaponry, and because makers of nuclear energy all ready are under intense scrutiny from NATO, it would not be a prudent choice for a covert attack.  The human race unequivocally have proven we are not capable of handling radioactive material.  If were were, our energy needs would be met.  Instead we cut corners, skim money, and allow cracks to develop in our reactor's cooling systems.  Then the local concrete company makes a fortune paving the complex over.  This isn't the example of an advanced civilization, and it has happened both in the United States and Russia.  Nuclear energy is not the answer.  Because microwaves now commercially are available, and which company owns what would be a great read, it is a more logical choice.  Maybe you could feed steroids to those ugly millimeter wave transmitters, and they at the proper request could blast you with dangerous levels of radiation.  Oh, aren't we all ready being blasted with dangerous levels of radiation?  We wouldn't know, because science was deemed not reliable during the Trump presidency.  Hundreds of years of study and harvesting of knowledge, and anything goes.  At least Cole Porter got a song title out of it.  What is more plausible and is concurrent with the pulsed theory, is the use of low frequency electromagnetic waves.  If we focus upon the lower frequencies then as perceivable waves we could actually sense the pulses.  When sound rises above 20 Hertz we cannot hear the individual pulsations or frequency of a this wave.  Instead we hear a resultant composite single pitch.  This is the nature of sound in music and the overtone series.  Only when certain pitches intermodulate can you hear "beats" with discernible frequencies.  It has been explained that this "beating" was part of the phenomenon described as the "Taos Hum."  It is not one pitch changing frequency, it is a pitch being modulated by another.  When sound or electromagnetic energy decrease below 20 hertz, no longer can you hear the pitch, but because they are so strong you begin to "feel" the waves themselves as moving air.  This is what they produce.  Sound needs a medium such as air or water.  What is disturbing is it, like electromagnetic waves, also can use solids such as our earth.  For the resident of Taos this was an issue, because the source of their sound, hum, or vibration originated from beneath the surface of the earth.  It was in a tunnel built by man for the express purpose of moving ore to the refinery.  Low frequency drives drove  a miles long conveyor similar to one in Colorado that crosses the continental divide through an old railroad tunnel.  They carry molybdenum.  My contention always has been if your were a troubled kid, were high or strung out on drugs, and had a mental break down, a continuous, invasive, vibrating hum coming through the earth and was inescapable could drive you to murderous rage.  Simple put the United States Navy all ready has dibs on one of these low frequencies.  Without being an expert it was around 14 Hz, and tree huggers were overt in their proclamation that high powered sonar in the oceans was grounding whales.  These low frequencies have been proven conclusively are dangerous to most living organism.  The GWEN project, or Ground Wave Emergency Network which wanted to transmit low frequency radio waves through the earth was scrapped when enough resistance emerged.  With all of the scattered information and plenty of diversion and down right lies from the Trump presidency, the rail industry continues to manufacture and utilize machinery capable of producing all of these artifacts.  Locomotives by design produce infrasound because of the firing rate of their prime mover or mammoth diesel engine.  All diesel engines produce this low frequency energy, and while you may not be able to discern pitch from it, you will feel its presence as intense pressure on your ears and body.  This is why people are put off my diesel machinery.  Let me reiterate that the engine used in most rebuilt SD-40's and GP-38's is a 649 (or maybe its 648...), and that my friends is a TWO STROKE turbo-charged engine.  This is in a train we are talking!  No race car.  No motocross bike.  Two stroke engines on motorcycles were outlawed because of their emissions, and yet these fifty year old machines once again are on the rise as a viable option for a multi-million dollar GEVO locomotive.  Let's reflect, shall we?  The knock of a diesel engine turning at 900 rpm, turbo-charged, and two stroke.  Can we imagine the sound of that?  Add a low frequency sound wave to pressurize and carry this vibration, but then add a new high voltage cabinet and AC tractive control which produces alternating current at whatever frequency you desire.  Whatever you desire!  Fleur-de-lis!  When that alternating current pulses, alternating, at a whopping 3 Hert to turn the traction motors 3 revolutions, do you think that massive amount of power will be contained in the locomotive's bogey?  My guess is it will radiate outward becoming a virtual symphony of electricity, heat, vibration, and pressure unbeknownst to all and most certainly denied by the quorum of Washington lobbyists as anything at all.  It is much more likely that real technology in the marine, aviation, or rail industries has encroached upon our private lives, and it is the mission of these companies to keep our attention on more urgent matters, say a deadly pandemic.  It would be prudent for the news bureaus to begin to do their age old jobs again and peruse and canvass the world for themselves.  The Age of the Suck Up or Trump Presidency is over. 

American Regeneration

I want to be more specific about my previous thread.  Every force known and available in the corporate world is sanctioned to divert our attention from truth.  When something in the national news gets really dicey, and specific corporate entities may be to blame, what happens?  Our attention gets diverted.  The three major network news organizations report mostly the same stories, and while I won't take the time to research their owners specifically, it would be no surprise if they all are controlled by a corporate conglomerate.  Deregulation has caused this problem.  Gatehouse media comes to mind, the company which owns scores of local newspapers in different states.  The Sinclair Group also is a major controlling faction in the reporting of the news in America.  If America is racist, then these white boy companies certainly are culprits in influencing American thought and sentiment.  Once there was a law that required media to report both sides of a story equally taking no partisan side.  When that law expired and was not renewed by Congress, Roger Ailes created Fox News.  The rest is history.  Newspeak was born in America.  The soap box chronicles have entertained and influenced Americans ever since.  It was no so much of a problem until the Trump Presidency.  A real viable threat to democracy was born, and communist sentiments still are proliferating among American citizens.  Easily and simply understood, a Republican lawmaker simplifies the federal government by saying they expect us to send them all of our money.  This is far from the truth, a heinous exaggeration, and a dangerous propagandist sound bite meant to resonate in simplistic minds.  Affluent Americans have been paying little in taxes for a long time.  The same is true in corporate America.  The idea that the rich deserve special treatment or an exemption from taxes is ludicrous.  It is oligarchical, totalitarian, and fascist to some degree to believe the rich can do whatever they want, because they "work hard."  A fair system of government means everyone pays taxes, and those making so much more than average Americans should pay more tax.  You can't squeeze water out of a stone, and the lower classes are the stones.  It is infuriating to see the balance of wealth continually going to the top one percent, especially when they do not reinvest this capital back into the American economy.  Instead it sits in overseas banks growing mold.  When the huge pulsed microwave weapon does fire, money won't be worth anything anyway.  What will be worth something is clean drinking water, fresh food, and warm shelter.  American values have become so skewed from money that no one recognizes true things of value.  Even if we do recognize them, Wall Street paints them as worthless to augment their own wealth and power.  The problem with America is not only policing but a failure to ascribe the appropriate value to real commodities.  We have been able to skew the graph by importing cheap goods from China, our arch enemy.  Unless America can wean herself off foreign teats and reestablish manufacturing independence, the dollar will remain low in value.  The economy America once knew now solely is under the control of Jeff Bezos, because internet shopping has usurped brick and mortar experiences with the aid of a global pandemic.  Who has benefited from Covid 19?  It is shocking.  Corporate America's primary goal is to keep attention away from their business and deny culpability for any harmful effects of their processes.  This list is topped by rail, and its thoughtful and intended ascension to power has no moral conscience.  The effects of an army of freight circulating the globe 24/7 has been dire and destructive.  They will not concede that the idea of a "Green Locomotive" is complete lunacy.  One demonstration of a Dash 9 in run 4 multiplied my thousands running continuously in our backyards would prove how undesirable this industry is.  "I'm sorry I can't hear you.  I can't hear the music, because there is jet engine around the corner."  Sheer noise and vibration no longer is the problem.  Now alternating current in massive quantities escapes from these  machines with which I must contend in the privacy of my own home.  A simple study of physics will demonstrate the properties of electromagnetism and how infrasound at great pressures and electricity escaping into our environment is wreaking havoc with human life.  Still priority number one is that this is not known.  Diversion.  Divert the attention of the public with claims of pulsed microwave weapons.  The realities of American life today are much more frightful than science fiction, seeing that we cannot stop ourselves from killing each other.  When the gavel of SCOTUS drops and eventually rules on the Constitutionality of rail domination, Americans will learn what grievous ills have been beset upon us.  AC traction is an aberration.  Like nuclear power we are not prudent enough as conscientious human beings to be able to harness and control its power.  Rogue energy will continue to infect our streets and allies until it becomes clear what is causing this disruption.  Poor radio reception?  Low amperage in your home?  Batteries running down?  Depression?  Physical illness?  Violent thoughts? Suicidal tendencies?  If there were such as thing as an honest Earth Day, it would be a day the United States President signifies as pastoral.  This would be a day (or a week) that every locomotive and every plane would sit silent on the tarmac or in the rail yard.  The heat would dissipate, the infrasound would cease, and the human race would regenerate.  

Death Sound

Albeit to say that where we live, our neighborhood, has changed in scope and dynamic, it is home.  We have lived in our neighborhood since 1978, and that is a long time.  Most people alive today didn't experience the 70's, and most everyone will agree that today things are different.  The world is a different place.  Is there a different criteria for buying a home?  As a musician and someone who does produce music at home from time to time, the desires for a home may be different.  We have made vast improvements to the house structure including insulation, HVAC upgrades, and paint.  These improvements were necessary.   Although they are effective at insulating your living space from the outside, nothing can completely ensure you happiness in a dwelling.  It is a life long pursuit.  Decor, feng shwi, and sentiment all cooperate in providing a comfortable or inspiring living space.  It would be optimum if our dwelling provided physical serenity on its own, but that is asking a lot.  The reason why people buy a second home often at a beach, is because that environment is more conducive to relaxation.  The wafting of warm ocean wind, the sound of undulating waves, and picturesque sunsets are effective at providing a peaceful experience for the mind and body.  Everyday life is not so storybook.  We must work for happiness, and for me music has been a large part of that happiness.  It is a vessel for personal intellectual and emotional expression.  Through music production you can express your feelings, seek salvation, and find respite from the anxiety of the modern world.  There are many kinds and styles of music, and each style carries a different role.  Rock music can be inciting and aggressive.  The Blues can be consoling.  Certain kinds of jazz music can be very sentimental and romantic.  The beauty of music is that it can provide emotional fulfillment not available in our immediate environment.  Our environment or our surroundings in large part are not determined by us.  We can fine tune our houses and yards, but the dynamic of our neighborhoods and towns are at the mercy of the consensus.  A consensus is achieved by considering most of the proximal things and also things further out.  These are factors home buyers would want to understand before buying a house.  If you find yourself in a home with a dynamic largely dictated by the outside world, it may diverge from you own desires.  Music can help, but music also can become an antagonist for a bullying and dominating force.  The world today has become very divided, and it is likely your neighbors and your co-workers may not have the same tastes as you.  If you project a certain vibration through music, it would be easy to receive push back from your efforts.  It is unfortunate that music can be so polarizing, but it seems to be the case.  I enjoy different styles of music, because none of them seems to be effective at soothing my tattered soul a majority of the time.  Continually I must change it up.  Lately I have shelved my desires entirely, because the military has been raising their own hell.  When you are being trained to kill the enemy with 155mm howitzers, jazz music has nothing to do with it.  Likewise it does not have the sonic strength to overcome that dynamic of field warfare.  When acoustic jazz waned in the 1960's, it was because it no longer could compete with the sheer volume and force of modern American life.  Largely this was because of the change from steam to diesel in the rail industry, and amplification became necessary to produce the power needed to produce music which could have a physiological impact on listeners.  You might be able to hear the music, but history shows the power of music is through feeling.  Its communal strength is in uniting common souls through its message.  This power of music has been lost in America, and the music industry has shrunk and complied.  Nowhere can we find the raw angst, aggression, and power of stadium Rock, Funk, and Heavy Metal.  It may have been NWA was the last musical group capable of connecting with and moving the masses.  Hip Hop was castrated, and its sheer sonic power and authority have disappeared.  Instead tepid, weak, and complicit pop music has taken its place.  It exists in a bubble refusing to confront the dynamic of daily American life.  To accomplish such a goal, to try and change the American dynamic through music, is a monumental task.  It requires vision, artistry, technique, and money, four things which rarely come together today.  Instead we live in a tube, a tube which used to be called television.  Now the tube is the internet, and its experience is not the same as real life.  In some ways it seems better than real life, but when the generator fails and the signal stops we are shit out of luck.  Better to prepare and produce on the grand scale employing many and effecting more.  This once was the way of America until the divisive presidency of Donald Trump.  His rallies used this methodology, but the message was wrong.  It is time for the people to reclaim this cultural need.  When I attempt to produce music, even in the home which has been upgraded and improved, certain ills of society continue to interrupt.  I have been able to truncate ambient noise to a large degree, but what remains are two things which, because they are invisible and inaudible, are doubted and discounted as refuse.  Indeed they are sly, covert, and scheming entities which continue to exert control over our lives.  Modern government and industry refuse to accept responsibility, only because you can't see them.  Diplomats at the Havana embassy could hear their protagonist.  It hummed, and buzzed, and clicked like crickets.  Most of these sounds could be considered to be otoacoustic or sounds made by the body itself in response to aural stimuli.  Tinnitus is an example in that its sound is produced by a dead range of the hearing spectrum.  An area where you no longer are able to hear produced the sound of tinnitus when subjected to low frequency sound waves.  It is perplexing.  In a certain way people with hearing loss actually can hear infrasonic stimuli.  It is how I know, because my left ear rings from tinnitus when planes or locomotives are nearby.  Needless to say when my ear is ringing from tinnitus, I don't hear as well.  My ability to hear and appreciate proximal music is lessened.  My ability to produce music live also is hampered, because lower frequency sounds are omni directional and not easily directed in a particular direction.  Bass tones become muddy and indistinct.  Phase distortion is introduced, and intermodulation produces unpleasant overtones.  It is difficult but not pointless to try and produce music under these circumstances.  The norm is what has happened across the globe.  The favorable and often pristine audio acoustics of a quiet world have been lost to the military industrial complex.  Nothing sounds the same and nothing sounds nearly as good as audio from the 50's and 60's.  As a musician you are dealing with a loaded deck, a slanted field, or an antagonist who is trying to defeat you before he even understands your message.  It is sheer domination.  Consequently democracy has suffered at the hands of this massive acoustic sickle.  It is due time for this nemesis to become recognized, be held accountable, and to allow greater cultural forces to inject life into a dying society.  

An Effective Tool Box for Life

I won't to get some things off my chest.  I was a solid employee when working on ships.  I was an exceptional pianist, although at that time I didn't understand that politics was more important than musical ability.  They didn't care if you could play.  They cared if you would make waves in the band and on the ship.  I learned this lesson over time, but several events stand out in my mind.  Until the drunken captain of the Costa Concordia ran his vessel aground entertaining a woman on the bridge, safety was not the biggest concern of a cruise company.  It was in place, and although most ships may have not been ready for a real emergency, it is unlikely a guest would perish while sailing on a ship.  I was trained in lifeboat safety, but after the incident in Italy all companies tightened their grip on safety responsibility.  Suddenly musicians were required to become sailors, and the accompanying training ensued.  I went down in the lifeboat every week, manned the oars, manipulated the hooks, and stowed the boat when the drill was over.  Before the Costa Concordia boat drill was more an inconvenience than a priority for members of the Crew Staff.  The Crew Staff were different than the regular crew, did more intellectual tasks, and made more money.  During drill there were a handful of things you needed to remember.  I made the mistake once of trying to be proactive during a crew drill when the United States Coast Guard was observing.  In the case of a real emergency or drill, you are unaware when this will occur.  You hear the horn, and its alert tells you to do a certain set of tasks to prepare for mustering of the guests.  The drills each week easily become commonplace, and when you are hundreds of miles from shore often they are relaxed.  On this particular occasion I wanted to be ready for the drill, since the Coast Guard was on board.  Mistakenly I donned my uniform and took my life jacket to a close location to my safety position, an assistant muster station leader on the starboard side of the ship.  I hid in a stairwell with my life jacket on to await the sound of the horn.  Subsequently I learned this action is frowned upon, but expressly the Safety Officer wants you to be limber and mobile in your response to an emergency.  It should not take you long to leave your place of work, fetch your life jacket from you cabin or a nearby locker, and man your station.  They want you to practice this particular action.  I found it inconvenient most of the time, because boat drill often was directly before an afternoon rehearsal.  If you wanted to be prepared for your rehearsal, you needed to focus on this task, not mustering the guests.  In this case I overprepared and was waiting in a stairwell for the horn to sound.  Minutes went by and there was no drill.  I waited thirty minutes and still no drill.  My back began to tire from sitting on a hard steel step, so like a moron I laid down on the floor to rest.  Little did I know that safety personnel were observing the crew through the ship's closed circuit video system.  Over five hundred cameras had been installed to watch the crew.  Evidently they had delayed the drill for me, because my lackadaisical behavior of laying down on the job waiting for the real drill suggested I was drunk.  This is what they believed, and suddenly an announcement was made over the P.A. that asked me to arise from my reclining position.  I did so, as two crew members above me on the upper landing of the same stairwell laughed at me.  They did not try to explain what I was doing was a mistake.  Instead they watched the Captain make an example of me.  A security officer was dispatched to apprehend me, and when he arrived grabbed my arm like an intimidating police officer.  Where was I to go, and why would I run?  I was not intoxicated, merely tired from waiting for this drill.  I was taken to the Safety Officer's office, and quietly and simply I told them I was Assistant Muster Station leader and was waiting for the drill to begin.  My back got tired, so I laid down on the floor of the stairwell.  At first they planned to demonize my behavior thinking I was stinking drunk, because later I learned this exact thing had happened previously on this same ship.  When they realized I was sober and prepared to do my job, quickly the wind went out of their sails and the drill proceeded as normal.  I was required to receive a written warning for this snafu, and the Musical Director took literary liberty in saying I was laying "face down" or prostrate on the floor.  It turns out the varied nationalities of officers on these vessels require a certain kind of allegiance, and sometimes American doesn't satisfy the formula.  I became an asshole of course, but only because my behavior was misconstrued and taken out of context.  This happened more than once, because Americans were in the minority on most ships accounting for only four percent of total crew.  As you can imagine democracy was not a priority for Italian led ships.  It became apparent quickly that the tenants of Communism were rife within the walls of these foreign run vessels, and you learned quickly how to mold to their pattern.  It meant keeping your mouth shut, doing what was necessary, and getting your kicks privately and within your own sphere of existence.  For me this became skating and music composition.  The latter became a fruitful aesthetic for me, and I produced over four hours of contemporary classical piano music, some eighty plus works which at some point in time I will publish.  Skating became a necessary outlet for physical assertion and mental therapy, and yet as they observed this phenomenon over time quickly and ironically skateboards became prohibited items.  This was infuriating to me, and changed my opinion of the cruise industry for good.  On several ships upon which I worked, we had developed a routine where I had to wait several weeks then write the Safety Officer a letter asking if I could keep a skateboard in my own cabin.  Often after they understood I was a responsible adult, it no longer was a problem.  Eventually a decree came down through the ranks that all skateboards would be prohibited for good.  I went on a ship, they confiscated my stick, and told me it would be discard in two weeks if I didn't dispose of it.  This was a hand made custom designed cruiser of which I was extremely proud.  While the safety of guests is paramount, and irresponsible drunken crew member can be fools, this was over the line for me.  Skating and sailing became a team for me disembarking the ship and riding my skateboard to a local park for an afternoon of physical activity and enjoyment.  It would seem their desire was to quell my enthusiasm and recreational outlet much like the Nazi party demonized jazz music.  Freedom is aloof but invaluable for human happiness, and yet it still has become an endangered species.  Being sober is a tool against the man, possibly one of the most effective in your box.  

Infrasonic Infrastructure

I was tired today, but I guess it was because I drank a lot of Scotch last night.  (I haven't been drinking at night for a while, and I feel 100% worse)  I decided to push the envelope and see what would happen.  The result was I was tired today, but I got done what was needed.  On the evening news on CBS there was a story about two attacks on Washington, DC political aids.  One attack was from last November, and it was not clear when the other one was.  These attacks they asserted were from pulsed microwave weapons.  Should I repeat?  On the national news two different women, both political aids, reported symptoms while involved in their daily routines that resembled vertigo.  They connected these attacks to events which unfolded at the American Embassy in Havana, Cuba in 2016.  Diplomats working at this location began to feel ill from a variety of different conditions including tinnitus, nausea, blurred vision, confusion, and fatigue.  A year later several academic institutions including experts from China probed the incident, reserve engineered the audio recording of the noise, and stated that in most likelihood low flying fighter jet ultrasound had combined with other classified security audio and intermodulated creating an upsetting aural sensation.  No where was it ever mentioned that it could have been a planned and instigate assault on American personnel.  Pulsed microwave energy has been a common conspiracy theory for years.  Many pundits believe a large weapon of this type will annihilate our power grid and computer systems rendering a nation vulnerable to foreign domination.  Pulsed microwave energy.  I am no physicist, but I know something about microwaves.  The first introduction America had to them was with an oven that cooked things.  Therefore microwaves must produce heat.  Second I know that NASA and other aeronautical companies use microwaves for communication through space.  They are received with a dish of which we all are familiar.  The microwaves are directional and can be focused into a tight trajectory.  Satellites transmit these microwaves regularly for various military, governmental, and commercial purposes.  It is common.  The military also has its own brand of microwave non-lethal weapon called the Active Denial System.  It requires a large diesel powered generator and a gyrotron to produce the massive amount of electricity needed to fire a tight beam of microwaves at an assailant.  The energy creates a burning sensation on the human skin but does not penetrate deeply enough to cause permanent harm.  Its effect on its target is one of burning, not symptoms of exposure to infrasound.  What the diplomats experienced at the American Embassy in Havana were the symptoms described by Vladimir Gavreau, a French scientist who has studied the adverse effects of low frequency sound.  Often they are intense, invasive, and can create the kinds of illness described by the victims.  The Conspiracy Theory is a smoke screen.  While distracting, entertaining, and novel, its nature is to subvert truth.  Often the truth is much more severe than the conspiracy itself.  For example Chemours continues to dump C8 into the Cape Fear River.  Lengthy studies have proven this chemical causes serious physical illness and death, and yet this company continues to commit genocide shielded from prosecution.  At Camp Lejune, North Carolina they dumped dangerous solvents into the ground which contaminated ground water and maimed and killed hundreds of local residents of Jacksonville.  Genocide is prevalent in America, but the heinous truth is often it is protected by the smoke screen of the lobby industry.  That is their purpose, to mass in Washington and pressure the members of Congress to do their bidding.  It has been proven that American lives continue to be sacrificed for corporate and personal gain.  The power of social class never has changed in America.  Pulsed microwave weapons are a smoke screen for the ill effects of the prime mover with its production of intense, continuous, infrasonic pressure.  These prime movers can be in the hulls of ships, in the chassis of a locomotive, or other places where electrical power is needed in bulk.  Now that AC traction has become the norm (since 1990), low frequency alternating current has joined the list of antagonist environmental concerns.  Rest assured any ill effects of the rail industry have not been studied, and yet this ever burgeoning Fortune 500 monolith now dominate American life.  If diplomats become ill, then it only is logical to look at the new cruise ship port in Havana.  Because the country has been closed to travel for so long, ships of this size have not frequented this location.  With President Obama's watershed treaty with Cuba, tourism has become open again, and the cruise industry is a heavy hitter in world economics.  How does one balance such an issue?   Regulation in government evolved to confront and mediate such situations.  If Republicans were to have their way, the American people would be shit out of luck and most likely dead.